open source

When director Richard Benton first announced the establishment of a new live Little Blue penguin exhibit at the International Antarctic Centre (IAC) in Christchurch in 2006, few would have guessed that the cute little sea birds were actually joining another penguin, already well established at the IAC. Like the native New Zealand Little Blue penguins, this penguin is perfectly adapted to its environment, which, in this particular case, is the Centre's IT server room.

The Linux penguin (his name is "Tux", and he is the official logo/mascot of the Linux operating system) first arrived at the Centre in 2001, when its management purchased the Attraction from its previous owner, the Christchurch Airport Company. In doing so, they lost access to their subsidised IT infrastructure previously provided by the Airport Company's internal IT staff. They needed to make the transition from the Airport Company's Novell Netware infrastructure to a sound system that was more cost effective to maintain.

To find a solution, Richard Benton took advise from the consultant managing the Centre's financial/accounting software package, Profax (now called Accredo). He suggested that Richard might experience even better system reliability while simultaneously saving money by building his company IT infrastructure around a Linux server infrastructure. In 2001, Egressive was commissioned to install a Linux server, running Mandrake Linux 8.2, and migrate the existing staff MS Windows 98 workstations from their Novell-based software dependencies to open source alternatives.

The new server was the hub of the IAC network, providing shared network access, web proxy services, a firewall, email and webmail services, a number of network fileshares, data archiving, print services, and more to a dozen staff workstations and point-of-sale machines.

Until 2006, the server only experienced a couple of minor hardware upgrades (increased disk space and a high-capacity backup tape drive) and a single operating system upgrade to bring it up to Mandrake Linux 10.1, allowing for enhanced fileserving capabilities for a new fleet of Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP Pro workstations.

In 2006, with email spam and viruses increasingly causing lost productivity and frustration among the staff, Egressive recommended to Mike Hyde, the IAC's IT coordinator and accounts manager, that the Centre upgrade its server to their new preferred Linux platform: Ubuntu Linux, 6.06 LTS (Long Term Service). Ubuntu Linux offered a number of enhancements over the previous Linux systems including:

• security updates for 5 years,
• in situ system distribution upgrades (e.g. from 6.06 to the subsequent Ubuntu Linux version 6.10 or 7.4),
• ability to act as a primary domain controller for Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP Pro workstations,
• active anti-virus scanning of all incoming/outgoing mail,
• active spam filtering for all incoming email,
• VPN connection allowing selected staff to access the IAC network securely from outside the office (from home or while traveling) as if they were sitting at their desks.

With the upgrade to Ubuntu Linux, the spam situation has improved markedly. There were some concerns (unnecessary as it turns out) that it might be too effective, so Egressive installed the excellent "MailScanner" package for the spam filters (it is now integrated with Ubuntu Linux). It provides an easy-to-use web-based interface for listing all mail coming into the system and whether on not it is deemed spam, virus-laden, or a legitimate email by the spamassassin spam filters. IAC staff can now identify any mail that might've inadvertently been deemed spam as acceptable via a simple "whitelisting" process. Similarly, they can see where their spam is coming from, and to whom via series of useful up-to-the-minute reports and graphs.

In addition to improved spam and virus filtering (note: the virus filtering is only for the benefit of the MS Windows workstations on the company network who receive email through the server - the Linux server itself is not vulnerable to MS Windows viruses), with some of the convenient application features available through Ubuntu Linux, Egressive is also provides proactive security patching any time Ubuntu release updates, as well as a monthly report summarising for Richard and Mike what their server has been doing and whether trends indicate upgrades, like additional hard disk capacity, should be considered.

Ultimately, IAC's transition to Linux has had no downsides. They have been able to extract the maximum value from their existing and ongoing investments in Microsoft software technologies with Linux on the server as a key enabler. Knowing that their system has been going strong for the past 7 years certainly provides confidence for the future, and Egressive's proactive support services means that Egressive should be the first to know in the event of any problems. What's more, IAC's infrastructure has room to grow - the Ubuntu Linux server now supports 28 workstations, laptops, kiosks, and point-of-sale machines - without breaking a sweat or adding expense.